Day 2 1,826 Words

You definitely see a lot, being in a war. I never thought it would change me as much as it has, but something just clicks. You can't really put your finger on it, but one day you realize you're not the same person you were when you got off that plane. I guess it's a lot like growing up. You can't remember when you first started thinking on your own, putting thoughts together, but when you have that first thought of what might happen to you when you die you're changed forever. There's that moment where you know you're conscious and then you can't tune out your own voice in your head. It's a permanent change, and the realization you have after you've been fighting for a few weeks is just as sudden and powerful. That's when you know you'll never forget how fragile life is. That's why I promise you I enjoy this beer in my hand more than the guy down the bar. He never questioned he'd be sitting here drinking. For me, this is one extra indulgence that probably could have been snuffed out.

Sure, I'll agree with that. It is experience. Experience makes life. Everything we know is what's happened to us. If I hadn't seen, heard or felt it, I wouldn't know it had happened. Oh I know, that old saying. If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound. Well, if you know it fell I guess it has to have made a sound. Yea, I wasn't there to hear it, but that's where you've got to use other things you know to figure out it did make a sound. If this glass falls, it'll make a sound, just like a tree. If no one saw the tree, no one would have known it had fallen. It'd still be just as true, but a truth that's lost forever. So yea, basically you've got it right, what you were saying, experience is what makes us who we are.

The interesting thing with what you're saying though, is that if experience makes us who we are, then we're never the same person. I'm not the same person who just walked into this bar a few minutes ago. I have a new experience, this conversation. Hell, even biologically I guess I'm a different person eh? I've eaten some food and had a bit to drink. So there's new cells in my body and some have died or fallen off. Yea, I guess it does sound a bit weird. I hear there are plenty of theories backing it up though. All kinds of neuro-stuff where people talk about electrical impulses and synapses that control everything you do. So I guess from that perspective what I said isn't too crazy.

If you think about it though, from a more life-like example it makes sense. I walked in here and I've been talking to you, we've already some smart ass things. I guess I may not always remember this conversation but whatever I do after this was the only way my life can continue. Whether or not I walk out of here and get in a fight or find a twenty dollar bill, it was all part of me walking into this bar first. So my experience here shaped what I'm about to do. Maybe your witty little talk will make me go buy a book and I'll get a desk job in four years instead of re-enlisting. Who knows? That's definitely some great food for thought, geez, it's a good thing you guys sell food at these bars. Ha, helps with the nausea and gives a great excuse to talk about something other than what they hell I'm going to do next in a fucking desert.

Exactly, everything's just coming from another experience. Nothing comes from nothing. What was that, from high school chemistry, thermodynamics? Energy and whatnot, freakish how things just come full circle like that. Even life is like that. Babies don't just spring up outta nowhere. You say the sperm and eggs are alive too? They've just been there, from other cells and everything. I've got to admit, you're a pretty damn interesting bartender. Ah, a philosophy major. Yea, I guess there's not too much else to do with that. Hell, let me tell you, it sure beats the fuck out of worrying about getting blown to bits every night that you go to bed in a foreign country halfway around the world.

War really makes you think how weird we are as people. Everyone's always hoping for better things, but they never learn from those experiences we were just talking about. People always want something more, something better, but as soon as they get it, nope. Right back to wanting something newer, bigger, better again. I guess it's that constantly changing thing. If we're not the same person from any instant to the next, how can we expect to always want the same things. Makes sense, we change and so do the things we want. You finally get a car and a job and suddenly you're free! Then you're trying to get an apartment and suddenly you have payments due everything month, so you jump from having all these new freedoms to just letting that freedom imprison you even more.

I know I never heard anyone complain more than my parents growing up. All the expenses of having a house and family. Paying for doctors appointments and house payments. That ying-yang thing may be onto something. Opposites attract and make each other. Yea, exactly, even the deeper things in life are like that. You can't die unless you're alive and you can't live unless you've never existed. Kind of frightening stuff but you come to think about life a lot more when you could lose your's any day in my line of work. Although I heard an Afghan villager tell some of us something that was really different. I hated what he said at first, but as the days went on I ended thinking about it more. We were in a raid at a house and someone accidentally killed the villager. Someone heard a noise from a room in the house that we were checking that was supposed to have been cleared. Like I said earlier, in these situations you shoot first and then ask later. So we tossed a grenade into the room to make sure we weren't about to get pinned in a crossfire. When it was all said and done we saw it had just been the villager running from one room into another.

It was only when I saw him lying there dead that what he said really started to make an impression on me. He had said that there's nothing to fear when it comes to death. We're alive so that we can die and even if death is nothingness we still have nothing to worry about. No one stresses over all the time and things that happened before they were born, so why should we be upset about what happens when we don't exist again? The future and the past really aren't that different from one another if you take the time to think about it. Looking at the absurdity of the whole thing just made it hit home. Maybe this war was meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It didn't matter any more why we were there. I couldn't give a shit what the politicians were saying, trying to get one another elected, that didn't matter, they weren't sweating in the hundred and ten degree weather. What mattered was that this man died, doing nothing else than trying to get back to his family when he saw foreign soldiers in his house. Now he was dead and it was just as permanent and straightforward as knowing that when the clock hits midnight tonight this day will never exist again.

That's when I decided it really didn't matter if the war was pointless. I could make it worthwhile for myself. That realization that I was going to die finally really hit me. Sure, I may die there, but I could die fifty years from now too. Did the length of time I spent breathing and eating really matter? That's why I'm re-enlisting. I could die tomorrow and it's not going to change how the world goes on. What I can do is try to bring food to those Afghan families without it. I can try to stop all the opium dealers in Afghanistan selling drugs that are killing people throughout the world. So maybe soldier isn't the right title for me. Sure, I've killed people. I will probably kill people in the future too. Does that make me a murder? If I save one more person from starvation than I kill am I in the positive when I die and people decide if I was a good person? Maybe that first kill, the face no one can forget when their buddies pat them on the back from shooting down an armed insurgent, is what taints me for eternity as a villan. If so, why should I worry about it? If I've already damned myself absolutely why try to do something that's not going to reset the threshold?

There's no point to that kind of an absolutist belief. Once a murderer always a murderer is the least productive attitude anyone could have when it comes to war. If I can never be forgiven for something I've done what incentive do I have to make something positive in the world? I can't believe that kind of thing. Seeing what I've seen I have to think that as we change we're constantly able to do something different. We have that freedom to be different today then we were yesterday. It's great too. It's a freedom no one can take from us. It doesn't matter if you were in the Taliban or a school teacher. For people to think you're going to act a certain way because of what you've done is dangerous. Yea, you're completely right. It is those experiences that make me what we are. Maybe those experiences don't make us a better killer if we're soldiers though. Maybe it'll make me realize all the damage I've done in this world. Maybe my experiences can make me want to take what I've done and make it better. I've got to hope I can keep changing. After all, I wasn't born into having blood on my hands. I can see myself doing more good. Hopefully those higher ups that I have to answer to can too. Maybe one day we'll ship more books into a country than weapons. Imagine that, soldiers armed with books and not guns, giving them to children instead of taking the lives of their parents. I think that's a future we can all drink to.